Wampum

We don't need no stinkin' gender data...

This morning, I was over in at the BLS.gov website when I noticed one of these icons:

which, during this Administration's tenure, always makes me more than a tad uneasy.

Needless to say, my concerns were not unfounded:

Discontinuation of Women Workers Employment Series

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Following the release of preliminary December 2004 data in February 2005, estimates for women workers will no longer be produced by the Current Employment Statistics program (establishment survey) in an effort to reduce respondent burden.

Data for women workers and other demographic information related to employment from the Current Population Survey will continue to be available at http://www.bls.gov/cps/.

Last Modified Date: November 5, 2004

So what does this mean in layman's terms? Essentially, the BLS will be collecting all of it's data on women's work from the "household" survey, not from the business, or "institutional" survey.

I'm sure the Bush Administration would love to count women who might consider selling their granny's Hummel collection on EBay as viable "employment." Beats having to ask General Motors how many women they have on the payroll, since it's obviously such an onerous task.

Sidenote: Before publishing this, my much-suppressed tin-foil-hat side emerged, and I wondered about the significance of this change in light of my earlier post on the Christian Right's gender agenda. It would be difficult to track the shift of women from the factory floor/corporate office to a home-based economic model if the work was valued "equally" by government accounts.

Posted by MB Williams at November 30, 2004 08:29 AM | TrackBack